Monday, May 24, 2010

Review: Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Starring: Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Katee Sachoff, Brad Loree

Well, well, well. What comes to mind when I say Busta Rhymes? The Halloween franchise? Holy shit, me too! I mean, why would you think anything otherwise? They go hand in hand, a perfect match, like peas in a pod.

Honestly, I just have to laugh at this movie. What was the creative process like? "Hey, guys, wouldn't it be FUCKING AWESOME if we had Busta Rhymes in a Halloween movie? And wouldn't it be even better if Rhymes...beat up Michael Myers in the climax? That's a winner right there. Cinematic gold, really." No, seriously, someone tell me how that ever seemed like a good idea. Watching that part is just completely surreal and strange. It isn't godawful, but...just really weird. This is what they chose to end the whole series on? This is what they thought would be a fitting conclusion to the Halloween name? Well, that sounds like the product of a long weed smoking session to me. Let's get started.

I don't even think the premise behind this is that bad. It involves a reality TV show sent into the Myers house to 'uncover why he was crazy.' It would have served as a nice bit of closure and add some intrigue after Michael Myers' death, if not for two big problems this movie has. The first is the fact that Myers isn't really dead. Yes, apparently in H20, the guy Laurie Strode killed was not Michael at all, but a fire fighter guy who Michael switched clothes with...and crushed his larynx so he couldn't tell anyone what happened. That's a pretty big stretch there. Couldn't you have just left it on a good note with H20, which basically was the only movie since the second one to feel like a real Halloween flick? I guess they really must have needed more money. Oh yeah, and they actually kill off Laurie Strode in the first ten minutes of the movie. Let that bit sink in a little before you read the rest of this review. Just let it sink in.

The second is that they never actually find anything that leads to any answers. I know the show was set up so that the kids would get scared and it would look good for TV, but...still, wouldn't it have been a better movie if there were some actual secrets revealed? The direction and acting in this isn't near as bad as Halloween 6, so it's just a shame the plot suffers so much.

The cast is pretty standard. You get an equal number of girls and guys, mostly egomaniacal weirdos...but Zoe Sachoff from the second White Noise movie is in it too, what a surprise. And the lead girl is your typical shy but still headstrong when she needs to be type. Only here they were capitalizing on the rising Internet use of that time, as the lead girl has an e-boyfriend she text messages often throughout the film, and it turns out he's a junior high kid at a Halloween party, watching her on the internet, as it is an internet broadcast. A lot of these scenes are pretty filler, but it gets pretty cool at the end when he's helping her avoid being killed by texting her Michael's whereabouts in the house. That's a pretty inventive idea.

But that's about as far as this film goes in regards to quality. The characters are mostly boring and dull, the kills are pretty unmemorable and the movie actually seems way too short, oddly enough. And Busta Rhymes, too. I'm no expert on rap music, but I do know that his performance here is annoying as hell. Seriously, dude, can't you go five minutes without sermonizing, acting like you're God and chewing up the scenery? It's obnoxious as hell. And to top it all off, we get the ending. After the cops and the press arrive in their usual timely manner right after everything is all over, Busta talks to the press and says first that Michael Myers is "not a spinoff, tie in or celebrity scandal"...right, that's why this movie exists; because he's NOT any of those. And then he says he's "done dancing for these cameras"...like he's pretending to not love the celebrity spotlight, being a rapper and all...hah. That is rich. What a dumb movie.